As is known, the flashing of a skin is carried out when the skin is still fresh after flaying or after its processing in a limiting pit. In either case the skin is, at the time of fleshing, in a very damp condition and bears compact matter and clots of flesh or fat on the inside. The fleshing of a skin requires shaving or cutting off, by means of rotating blades, these clots or projections and this can be only done by passing the skin past a series of blades, knives or the like, which are usually connected to a rotating roller. To this purpose, it is necessary for the skin to be processed from a region central of its length (middle area), because the ends of the skin appendages corresponding to the head, paws and tail from which it is impossible to start the processig. For this reason, approximately one half of the skin is inserted into the fleshing machine, pressed at that point between the drawing rollers and then advanced and subjected to the cutting action of a series of blades of a roller rotating in the opposite direction to the direction of advance of the skin.
In known machines the operator is obliged, at the end of the first processing period, to take the skin out and to insert it again on its opposite side, while in the known continuous machines the operator is obligned, as soon as the machine commences the processing, to turn the half of the skin which is left outside the drawing rollers and to locate it on an upper conveyor belt so as to cause it to advance towards a second fleshing machine.
If it takes into consideration that a normal skin may be two or three meters in length and is relatively heavy, it will be understood that the upward turning over of half the skin, covered with fatty substances and being both slippery and repellent, requires considerable use of manpower and time in order to correctly execute the operation.
Machines for continuous fleshing have also been proposed, which operate with two cylinders with blades (blade cylinders), the transfer from each to the other of them being effected by means of conveyor rollers, on which the skin is left after the first processing to be subsequently grasped by the drawing unit of the second blade cylinder.
Notwithstanding the solutions which have till now been adopted, some problems which make processing difficult nevertheless remain.
In fact, the use of two separate machines or processing units, which are linked by a conveying system with belts, rollers and the like, requires a careful control and presents the risk that small size skins may fall off. Furthermore, it is possible that a complete fleshing of the length middle area of the skin will not be effected, owing to a lack of overlapping of the processing starting positions of the two paired machines. Manual intervention for controlling the processing at any stage is therefore required.